South Korea and Japan have urged parties concerned to speed up efforts to resolve the dispute over North Korean funds frozen at a Macao bank.

Meeting in Egypt on the sidelines of a global summit on Iraq, South Korean Foreign Minister Song Min-soon and his Japanese counterpart Taro Aso stressed the need to resolve the financial dispute as soon as possible.

According to a Seoul official who accompanied Song, the two met after Beijing and Moscow opposed the idea of holding a five-way meeting involving South Korea, the United States, China, Russia and Japan on the stalled six-party process.

North Korea walked out of the latest round of the nuclear talks in mid-March, insisting that it receive its 25 million dollars frozen at Banco Delta Asia. It demanded that the funds be transferred to another bank to ensure free access to the international financial system after BDA was blacklisted by the U.S.

The official said that China and Russia would not agree to a meeting without North Korea, citing a need to resolve the North Korean nuclear issue within the six-party framework, which includes the North.

During the Song-Aso talks, the South Korean official also explained the need to develop a multilateral security regime in Northeast Asia to establish a lasting peace in the region, where the U.S., China, Japan and Russia have conflicting interests.

The multilateral security regime was agreed upon at the six-party talks held in Beijing in September 2005.